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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176450">this haunting has memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot'>livenudebigfoot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Person of Interest (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters, Haunted Houses, M/M, Ouija, Psychic Abilities</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 03:28:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lionel Fusco, an ordinary man with an unusual gift, is hired to conduct an investigation of a remote country house owned by Mr. Harold Finch.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harold Finch/Lionel Fusco</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/gifts">branwyn</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Fusco's got a grudge against the house from the start.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For one thing, it's upstate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For another, he doesn't like the look of it. Objectively, he thinks to himself as he pores over the pictures the client sends over, it's an impressive piece of real estate. Three stories, shaped like an octagon, tall and impressive dome with a little lookout up top. Used to be some bright color, pink and white maybe, like a wedding cake, but the paint’s all faded and peeled. There’s a little old world shabbiness to it, like it's too grand and important to not have decayed a little. Tucked away amongst rolling hills on a sprawling estate, it's the kinda place people dream about. Pay to take tours of. Bookmark on Zillow. Covet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alright for some. Fusco can't sleep without the sound of traffic, so it'd be a nightmare for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the windows have a vacant quality he doesn’t quite like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lee strolls up close behind him, peers over Fusco’s shoulder at the papers and pictures strewn over the kitchen table. “That’s the place?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It </span>
  <em>
    <span>looks</span>
  </em>
  <span> haunted,” Lee says, but he says it without any kind of certainty. Lee doesn’t have what his dad has, thank fuck. “You’re gonna overnight?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco shakes his head. “Longer. Couple days, maybe a week. The owner wants a full investigation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you be back for Halloween?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure I will, pal.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>First impression: Harold Finch doesn't look like a guy who believes in ghosts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that there’s a look. Fusco’s been in this line of work for a while, and he’s seen all kinds. There’s cranks, yeah, and they’ve got a little bit of a look to them: a wideness of the eyes, a flutter of the voice, the way they lean in all desperate to tell their ghost story. They’re Fusco’s most frequent customers. The kinds he turns away after the second or third time they call him up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His other clients though, the people with real problems, they can look any kind of way. Young, old, black, white, rich, poor. Embarrassed, eager, tight-lipped, angry, relieved. More often than not, relieved. Fusco figures most of them just want somebody to tell them they’re not crazy. He’s happy to do that when they can. They’ve all seen or felt something wild, something they can’t explain on their own. That’s what makes them call Fusco.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harold Finch doesn’t look like he’s ever seen anything he wouldn’t try to confidently explain. There’s a kind of bloodless smugness to him, Fusco guesses. Something in his thin lips or his straight brows or the way he looks down at Fusco from the doorway. Like he’s seen something he finds distasteful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you have any difficulty finding the place?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Fusco says. “Your directions were good. You weren’t kidding, though, when you said the place was out of the way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” he says. “That’s generally how I prefer it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He steps aside, lets Fusco in through the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco steps in through the big, grand foyer and, at Finch’s distasteful cough, removes his jacket and bends to remove his shoes so he won’t track mud through the man’s house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were pretty tight-lipped on the phone,” Fusco says as he muddles his way through his laces. “I’m pretty curious to hear what you’ve been experiencing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you?” Finch answers, in tones of dull surprise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t want to tell me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he says. “I have no interest in that. What I’m interested in, at this juncture, is your...unalloyed perception of the issue.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco nods slowly. “OK. We can do it that way. More, uh, more scientific, I guess. Whaddya call that, single-blind?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lifts one eyebrow. “One could, were this undertaking remotely scientific.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco chooses to ignore the barb. “So this thing, whatever you’re dealing with: it’s something I’d be able to see? Or hear? Smell or touch, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isn’t that what you do?” he asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure. But these things, they can be kinda personal. It might manifest in what </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>feel. Emotionally, I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do I strike you as an emotional man, Mr. Fusco?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, sir, you do not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then shall we proceed?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hang on.” Fusco flips a switch on the device that hangs from his belt, waits for the lights to turn on, gets his first read. All clear. “Yeah, OK. Lead the way.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He’s never been in a place quite like this. He’s been inside nice places, sure. Fancy places. Old places. He’s been hired by a few hotels like that back in the city, and a few of the old brownstones. Usually they hustle him out the back door, under cover of night. There’s a bit of charm to a haunting, he thinks. A little excitement, a little glee when people get to say, “We’ve got a ghost.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time they call Fusco, the charm’s usually long gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charm’s alive here, Fusco thinks, just a little bit. It lives in Finch. In the way he lights up when he talks about the place. The house was built in 1859, he says, by a financier who had a mind towards building himself a country house. It’s got that big porch that circles all around. Outside, it’s got a carriage house and some stables, currently horse-free and it’s got an apple orchard, apples to spare. Inside, there’s a solarium, a library, a wine cellar, a billiards room and a music room all done up to look like an Egyptian tomb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You live on a Clue board,” Fusco tells him, brushing his fingertips over the strings of a dusty violin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch doesn’t even crack a smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The type of house it is, Finch tells him, is an Octagon House, which is a pretty straightforward name and suits Fusco just fine. Only a few of them were built, ever. The guy who designed them figured that an octagon was more efficient. Easier to keep cool in the summer and heat in the winter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was he right?” Fusco asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Finch says. And then he adds, “He was a phrenologist,” as though that explains it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You a historian, Mr. Finch?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He seems to like that. A little color comes into his cheeks. “Only an amateur,” he says. “But the place is an historical treasure and I felt…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They were gonna tear the place down,” Fusco says, testing gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch gives him a curious, sidelong look. “You did your research. Yes, I was...restless. Considering a move. When the place was condemned, I simply had to step in. I was hoping to have it restored but, with everything…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had to place that project on hold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So if you’re not a historian,” Fusco asks. “What are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m a software engineer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco looks him up and down a long while: the fancy, well-kept suit, the way his manners are out of another time altogether. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Retired,” Finch adds. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe that’s why the cameras, Fusco thinks to himself. Not a perfect explanation, he knows. He’s working on it. But they’re everywhere, in every corner, staring down every hallway. They’re the only thing about the place that’s new and gleaming, the only things not covered in a genteel layer of dust. The only things alive, their little red lights gleaming in the house’s dim interior. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s more than you’d have for security, even if you were real paranoid. Fusco can’t help but wonder what’s showing up on those cameras.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he leaves it for now. Finch seems like he’d rather talk about anything other than ghosts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a change of pace for Fusco. Usually his clients can’t bring themselves to talk about anything else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Up on the third floor, there’s a winding staircase, headed up to an octagonal hatch in the ceiling. Fusco climbs up it without really thinking, hears the wood groan under his feet. He puts his hand to the hatch and presses up, gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s no give.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s locked,” Finch says. “The upper floors are quite unsafe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mhmm. Weak floors. Weather damage. Animals, no doubt. You don’t need to see it, do you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Fusco says, backing down the staircase. “Nah, I’m good for now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco stuffs his hand, the hand that touched the hatch, in his pants pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s like </span>
  <em>
    <span>ice</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They wind back down to the foyer, where Fusco’s bags sit huddled like orphans in the doorway. He picks them up, one under each arm. “Lemme get these out of your way,” he offers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch nods to him approvingly. “I’ll show you to your room.” He guides Fusco back up the stairs again, a little dignified, butler-y shadowplay, before he says at last, “Having seen the house…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Having taken your initial assessment of the property,” Finch tries again, “what...what is your diagnosis?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing?” Finch repeats, disgusted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t see anything. Didn’t feel anything. Feels like a big, old, fancy house that needs some work. Why, did you see anything?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Finch admits. “I suppose I felt the usual...apprehension, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I didn’t miss anything,” Fusco interrupts. “I’ve been here less than an hour. I ain’t even spent a night here. If you could tell it was lousy with ghosts forty-five minutes into the tour, you wouldn’t’ve bought the place, right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s mouth flexes. Suppressing a smile, maybe. That could be wishful thinking on Fusco’s part. “You have no concerns, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“About what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a slightly strained voice, he says, “About...about me. About my...perceptions.” Hastily, he adds, “Or about the property.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I only woulda been worried if this thing went off,” he says, patting the device on his belt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, I admit I was curious. I’m afraid I haven’t watched the...the programs. Ghost Adventures, or whatever it is. Will you enlighten me as to the function of that...thing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno if they use ‘em on those shows,” Fusco says with a shrug. “It’s a carbon monoxide detector.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And sure, he does feel a little professional satisfaction as Finch’s mouth buckles.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Fusco’s upstairs, dressing for dinner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s words, not his. Fusco’s taken that to mean he should bend over the sink in the en suite bathroom and splash some water on his face. Swap out his shirt. Reapply deodorant. Brush his teeth. Run a comb through his hair, maybe. He’s not refined and he doesn’t have a supper suit, or whatever a guy like Finch thinks you should wear to dinner. He’s all out of his depth here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Take the room, for instance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His first impression is cupcakes. Cupcakes in a shop window in some gentrified neighborhood, all puffed up and exuberantly pink and crowned in fondant filigree. That’s what the bed’s like, what the vanity and the chair is like, what the nightstand and the dresser is like, and what the walls reflect back. You could go crazy in here, looking at all that pink and white and gilt. He bets that’s what happened to whatever Victorian lady decorated this room. Sat here at the vanity brushing her hair one hundred times a night until she snapped the brush in half and started ripping down the wallpaper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’d make a real nice B&amp;B, if he believed for a second that Finch was the kinda guy who could tolerate tourists in his house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And what kinda guy Finch is...well, that’s the whole question, isn’t it? Weird how he won’t say what’s happening here. What made him hire Fusco. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It crossed Fusco’s mind that Finch might be no believer at all. That Finch might be trying to catch him out as some kind of fraud, some kind of actor who wears scarves and waves his hands around and gives out messages from the great beyond from somebody whose name starts with J or M. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cameras are weird too. He’s had people do that before, set up cameras. Done it himself a couple of times. But never this many and never in so many places. This guest room is the only place in the whole house Fusco hasn’t seen one. And just because he can’t see one, he thinks to himself rather darkly, doesn’t mean it’s not there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’d be unwise to not entertain the possibility that Mr. Finch is some kinda creep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr. Fusco,” a voice says, hollow and strange and clear as day. Fusco whips around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing. Nobody. He’s alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He glances at the door. Completely closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Losing it,” he mutters to himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the voice comes again, it makes his blood run cold. It’s deep and icy and echoey, at once far away and horribly, terribly close. “Mr. Fusco?” it says again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, rather abruptly, “Oh, goodness, I forgot to tell him about the speaking tubes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco feels a nervous giggle coming on and presses it down. “That you, Finch?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is.” The voice is still cold and echoey, but now it’s a touch embarrassed. “I’m terribly sorry, that must have been awful. If you look by the door to the en suite, it’s...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco can see it now, a golden fixture on the wall that looks like the horn on a gramophone. There’s so much gold bullshit on the walls, Fusco hadn’t even noticed it. He steps up, speaks directly into the horn. “You scared the…” Fusco pauses, adjusts his language. “The heck out of me. What is this thing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A speaking tube. They were invented to be a primitive intercom system but the effect is rather...eerie. I’d text you, but I’m afraid it’s quite impossible to get a phone signal from inside the house.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He realizes suddenly that he hasn’t taken a single call or received a single email since he got here. “I’m gonna want to call my kid sometime soon. Is there a…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had great luck making calls from the orchard,” Finch offers. “And there’s the gazebo, should it happen to rain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for the tip. Was there something…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh! Yes. You don’t happen to have a shellfish allergy, do you?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco breaks into a grin. “Nope.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, good. I really should have asked earlier. Do you have any dietary restrictions at all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr. Finch,” he says, “I’m an easy man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And maybe it’s his imagination, maybe it’s just an echo or a mouse nesting in the pipe, but Finch seems to sputter a little at that before he recovers. “Then, by all means,” he says at last, “join me downstairs when you’re ready.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He’s a little sweeter when you don’t have to deal with him face to face</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Fusco decides as he steps back from the speaking tube. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts on a polo shirt - about as close as he gets to a suit these days - and slaps on a little aftershave. He takes a picture of the room, so he can text Lee the Cupcake Nightmare next time he gets a signal. He ducks back into the bathroom, makes sure there’s nothing in his teeth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He almost doesn’t hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s as he’s walking out of the bathroom again to join Finch for dinner. He’s moving fast and he almost misses it. A little sound from the speaking tube, a little flutter of noise. Something he’d disregard, except it sounds like talking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You say something, Finch?” he asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco leans in, so close his ear is actually inside the horn. He holds his breath. He listens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hears it again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not anything he can understand, not something where he can pick out one word from the next. But it’s there, unmistakable. The rise and fall of whispers, precise and frantic and almost impossibly fast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound of a hundred voices whispering, all together.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Fusco’s walk down to dinner is a little delayed. Not for any real reason, he’s just taking pictures for Lee. Lee likes that kind of thing, when the hall is dark and eerie, when there’s a shelf full of skulls and rusty wind-up toys, when there’s a wall covered in somber portraits or butterflies on cards. Lee likes when the haunted house looks like a haunted house. He imagines Finch will know he’s doing it sooner or later, what with the cameras everywhere. But what the hell, he’s a paranormal investigator. He’s allowed to take a couple pictures here and there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the dining room, he finds Finch lighting candles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Atmospheric.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve decided,” Finch says, tongue between his teeth as he strikes a match against the matchbox, “to encourage them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco draws out his seat, all plush and carved oak. “They can be encouraged?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He winces, almost imperceptibly. “I’m afraid so.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know,” Fusco says as he sits at the table. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m well aware of that. But I’d rather like to prove it to myself,” he says. And then, to himself, rather firmly, “Dinner.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He vanishes through the double doors to the kitchen. The candle flames gutter, waver, and hold strong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch returns with scallops, pillowy and seared, and a vegetable risotto. Fusco rises from his seat, shoves a trivet beneath the pan of scallops as Finch lowers them gingerly to the table. “That smells great.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you. I’m rather excited to test the recipe on someone. With nothing else in particular to occupy my time, I thought I might...might try cooking for myself. For once.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re new at this?” Fusco asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Am I not obvious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You just seem like the kinda guy who subscribes to fancy cooking magazines.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, yes I am. But absolutely no time to cook. Until…” He falls silent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They tuck in. The scallops are kinda rubbery but it’s good, overall. Especially for a beginner.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since they seem to have reached the limits of their conversation, Fusco gets down to business. “I’d like to walk around the place on my own tomorrow, if that’s OK.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s fork scrapes the plate. “That’s fine,” he says, guarded. “Was my tour incomplete?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah. But sometimes it’s, uh, easier to notice things if I’m on my own. Not so many distractions.” Fusco scrapes his remaining risotto into the center of his plate, builds the perfect forkful. “I wish you’d tell me what it is you’ve been dealing with, Mr. Finch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When the time comes,” he says. “When and if.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got something you could show me, if telling me is so bad?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch goes very still and peers at Fusco curiously. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The cameras. They could be for security, sure, but I got a feeling…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t recorded anything that you need to see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco sighs deeply, drops his fork onto his plate. “You know, Mr. Finch, it’s good to call the cops if something of yours gets stolen. But if you don’t tell them what’s been stolen or when you saw it last or who you think took it or if anything’s missing at all, it’s kind of a waste of everybody’s time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Beg your pardon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m saying I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My primary concern,” Finch says, icily, “is determining, definitively and to my own satisfaction, that there </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>a problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco sighs deeply and pushes out his chair. “Well, fuck it,” he says after a second. “You wanna have a seance?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch blinks at him across the table. “If...if that’s what you recommend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno if I recommend it, but it beats you and me dancing around each other in the dark. You say you wanna provoke this thing? Seance’ll do that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright then. Do you...what do you need from me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco considers. “I didn’t bring my ouija board. You got Scrabble?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch stares at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bananagrams works too. I just need the letters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch pushes back his chair. “I think there’s a Scrabble board in the curio room.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>There’s a mystique to this, Fusco feels. Nothing wrong with the old ouija board, of course. It does the job fine. But there’s something to making your own. Girls used to do it, he remembers. At school, they’d do it real sneaky, with a pen and paper and take it to the bathroom to play. And later at recess, at the back of the yard, when they figured out that Fusco could make those homemade boards dance. A little homemade, a little kitschy, but uncomfortably real.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the same thing, all grown up. The ring of letters, evenly spaced under Finch’s finicky, laserlike supervision. The wine glass, bone dry and upside down in the middle. The two of them, leaning low over the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should I bring a candle?” Finch asks, glancing nervously over at the sideboard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can see,” Fusco says. “Can you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can,” he says. “Is the low light…necessary?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was your idea, chicken.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch frowns, leans back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You wanna do this or what?” Fusco asks him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Very deliberately, Finch puts one fingertip on the glass. Fusco joins him so they meet in the middle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s finger is very cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are there any rules I need to be aware of?” Finch asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not really. I mean, people say there are but…” He feels the glass start to shift a little under his hand, to sway in an idle kinda way. “...it’s not really a ‘rules’ kinda game. OK, folks,” he says, a little louder as the glass starts to move in a slow spiral under their fingertips. “My name is Lionel. My friend here is Harold. Lines of communication are open. Anybody’s unhappy, anybody’s restless, anybody’s got a couple knock-knock jokes they wanna share...the floor is yours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s it?” Finch hisses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure. You got something else in mind?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just thought there might be an...an incantation or a prayer or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You introduce yourself to strangers with an incantation, Finch? ‘Nice to meet you, let us pray’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>a little over the top,” he admits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass is relaxing, swaying, moving in a big lazy circle in the center of the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch whispers, “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with the ideomotor effect?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmhm.” Fusco’s relaxing too, letting his mind be wide open. “No, don’t think I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t consciously make every movement we make. We don’t think to ourselves, ‘Eyelids, blink,’ or ‘Lungs, breathe’. These processes are automatic, unconscious. Many of our movements are. Thereby, the subconscious mind can, under the right suggestion, move the body quite...quite extraordinarily.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that’s what we’re doing right now, you and me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Excited to see what your subconscious thinks these ghosts have to say.” The movement of the glass on the table tightens, becomes a sharp figure eight in the very center of the table. Maybe an infinity sign. “Looks like somebody’s ready to talk,” Fusco says. “What’s your name, stranger?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass breaks formation to scrape across the table in an emphatic X. Then it darts back to the center of the table and resumes its figure eight movements.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK,” Fusco says. “We don’t have to do names just yet if you don’t want to. But I gotta know. Are you the one giving my friend Harold all this trouble?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass breaks out of its pattern to make a decisive, definitive move for the Y.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Fusco says. “Thanks for your honesty. Harold hasn’t filled me in on what’s going on in this house, and I’m kind of in the dark here. If you wanna share your side of the story, I’m listening.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass moves in a peculiar, disorganized loop, as though stuttering, fumbling for words. It falters, hesitates, and moves with confidence for the A. The B. Back to the A.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>N-D-O-N-E-D.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK. Just to make sure I’m clear, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>were abandoned?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got it. Got it.” He looks to Harold, who’s staring at him across the table, wary and wide-eyed. “This place was left empty before?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On and off,” he whispers. “Over the years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK. We can look into that.” Louder, he asks, “Who abandoned you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass glides effortlessly, F-A-T-H…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Father?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It abandons the word, darts to the Y.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry that happened to you. I got a kid myself. I...that must’ve been awful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A-L-O-N-E, it spells out, slow and deliberate and plaintive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t imagine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Finch snaps. “You needn’t be...maudlin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know you’re moving it,” he hisses. “This tragic Victorian child act may sell to credulous housewives, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think I’m faking this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone must be.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Finch tries to snatch his hand from the glass, Fusco seizes him with his free hand, holds him steady by the wrist so that fingertip stays on the glass, touching Fusco’s. “Don’t.” Finch’s eyes are wide, his muscles lock up at the touch, but he doesn’t try to move. “I don’t care if you believe this is real or not,” Fusco says. “It’s just a kid, and I think I’m getting somewhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch relaxes by a degree in his grip. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK. What can Harold and I do for you? How do we make things better for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>H-E-L-P, it spells out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, kid, but h…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It keeps moving, spells out, R-E-M-E-M…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Remember.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Y.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK. We need a little help from you first, kiddo. Something to help us find you, help us remember. Can you try to tell me your name again?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A determined, definitive X.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs deeply, wonders what makes that. What makes a spirit that doesn’t know its own name. “What if you gave me something else? A date I could look into, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass moves in a distressed, confused little spiral.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re right, you’re right. It’s tough with just letters. Especially if you don’t know where to start.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass gives an excitable little shake under their hands, like a wet dog. On to something, maybe. About it not knowing where to start. Something to think about.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somebody else’s name, maybe? If you can’t give me yours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A slower, more thoughtful spiral. It goes for the J. The O. The H. The N. It rests there for a moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s half the guys on the planet, pal, I might need a little more than…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass lurches off the table for the barest second, slams back down with a hard thunk and resumes its motion, faster than it’s ever moved before, scrambling across the table, spelling out A-T-H-A-N-J-E-S-S-I-C-A-J-A-M-E…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that’s when it slips out from under their hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It keeps going. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a streak, a blur of reflected light tracing out letters all frantic and desperate like someone stumbling over their words, like somebody screaming. The glass picks up speed, moving faster than his eyes can follow. Tiles get knocked to the floor, but the glass keeps returning to the empty spaces like broken keys on a typewriter, like redactions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You gotta slow down,” he says, breathlessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glass, by way of response, flies to the center of the table, shudders for a moment, and bursts into shards. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At that exact second, the candles go out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shouts as a fine mist of glass hits him, hears Finch yelp in return from somewhere across the room. Fusco fumbles in his pocket for his phone, finds it and turns on the flashlight just as Finch strikes a match.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the flickering glow of that tiny yellow flame, Finch is wide-eyed, hollow-faced. Fusco must look the same. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What on earth does that mean?” Finch asks, cradling the match with a shivering hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m gonna be honest with you, pal. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” he sighs as he relights every taper on the candelabra and goes in search of the lightswitch. “I can’t help but feel slightly proud. It’s a little like having a disease named after you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco knows just what he means.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The lights in the dining room flicker on doubtfully, shedding a sober, yellow glow on the table, now covered in a mix of shattered glass and Scrabble tiles, and the floor, pretty much the same. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Christ,” Fusco mutters, crouching down low so he can get a better look at the glass, crushed so fine it glitters. “Is this the kind of thing you’ve been dealing with?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch takes a deep, shivering breath. “Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the hell does that mean?” he answers, lifting his head. And then, somewhat softer, “Oh,” because Finch has a little streak of blood on his cheek, a bright little red river. Like he cut himself shaving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco rises to his feet and, without much thought, steps closer to see the tiny triangle of glass embedded in his skin, right below the rise of his cheekbone. “You’ve got…” Fusco says, holding out his hands. “You’re bleeding. Do you mind if I…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the kind of thing he bets Finch wouldn’t stand for ordinarily, but he does it quickly: holds Finch still by the lightly stubbly chin and plucks out the piece of glass before he has the chance to struggle or yelp or protest. Showing Finch the piece of glass, Fusco murmurs, “You got a strange tenant in this house with you, Harold.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s fingertips drift numbly up to his face, to dab at the streak of blood. “What do you suggest?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d like to start with research,” he says. “In the meantime, I think you should go get yourself cleaned up while I sweep up this glass.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Finch says, playing the gracious host with a kind of robotic urgency. “You’re a guest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah, I’m the one who brought up seances and broke your nice wine glass. I’ll clean it up. You got a broom anywhere?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch considers and Fusco kinda knows, just from looking, that Finch isn’t in the habit of making messes. “I think there’s a broom in the hall closet?” he tries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And as it turns out, he’s right.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He next sees Finch peering down at him from the top of the stairs. His hair is wet and there’s a tiny Band-Aid carefully affixed to his cheek. He looks flushed and faintly chastened. “I hope it didn’t take you long,” he says, with a nod to the broom in Fusco’s hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah,” he confesses. “I did a little looking around, while I was on my own.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see. Did you find anything?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing you need to hear about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In truth: nothing. Because there’s a feel to it, generally. A sensation like when you’re the only one upstairs at a party, and everything’s quiet and still, but you can feel that other world pulsing beneath you. The thud of music against the soles of your shoes. The ripple of laughter through the floorboards. The universe next door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s none of that here. The house is antiseptic, quiet like a receiving line at a funeral. A feeling like a new house, like nothing here lives or has ever lived. He doesn’t even see any spiders or flies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet, the evidence of the talking board and the shattered glass is unmistakable. Unless this Finch is a real special effects wizard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which is a possibility Fusco can’t bring himself to rule out. There’s something about this guy, something stubborn and challenging. His natural inclination is to sneer at the work Fusco does. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco’s inclination, always, is to sneer back. Something he needs to work on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t worry about it,” he says in answer to the frown that flits across Finch’s face. “If I pick up something real, you’ll be the first to know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch gives him a curt but – he thinks – grateful nod. “Will you be staying up?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah, I’ll start fresh in the morning. I’m beat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very well, then. Good night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“G’night, Harold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d prefer you didn’t call me Harold,” he says, “outside of the confines of your little ritual.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright. As long as we’re hashing this out, you’re allowed to call me Lionel, if you want.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unsmiling, he answers, “I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fusco.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah, he’s an interesting guy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Fusco thinks as he turns in for the night, climbing the stairs and shutting off lights as he goes. Difficult. Impersonal. One of those guys who has known what he wanted to do his whole life and just wishes everybody else would shut up and get out of his way. The kind of guy who doesn’t have time for anybody else’s indecision or imprecision or small talk or nicknames. The kind of guy who doesn’t believe in ghosts.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So what,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Fusco wonders as he sinks into the overstuffed mattress in the over-pink guest room, </span>
  <em>
    <span>would a guy like that want with somebody like me?</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He doesn’t know where he is at first. The room’s all wrong; the moonlight pouring in the window is all wrong. In the first, blinking instant, he takes it for a dream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he remembers. Mr. Finch. The Octagon House. Everything snaps into place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What woke me up? he wonders as he shifts around in bed. Could just be the moonlight, perversely bright and cool out here in the countryside. He’s dealt with brighter, more annoying lights outside his bedroom window before, but this is different enough, he guesses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Could be the unfamiliar bed. Not that his mattress at home is so good – this one’s inarguably better, as dense and soft as a marshmallow – but it’s old and it groans in an unfamiliar way when he rolls over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Could be the voices from the speaking tubes again. He can’t hear ‘em now, but the fact that he woke up straining to listen makes Fusco think he heard something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or, most likely, it could have been the creak of his bedroom door swinging open. Because it does creak. He noted that when he first arrived. And he did shut it tight and turn the latch before he went to bed because he didn’t like the cameras and he’s not quite sure what to make of Finch yet, but here it is, hanging wide open, letting in the darkness of the hallway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The darkness out there has a hideous density to it, a weight. It has a smell, a taste. To walk through it, he thinks, would be like wading through tar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So it’s strange to watch the figure glide effortlessly past his door, tall and slim and dark save for its bone-white head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco kicks the heavy blankets off his legs and throws himself out of bed. Takes him only a second to get to the doorway and thrust his head and shoulders into the darkness of the hall.  It’s there at the end of the hallway, like it paused to wait for him, head turned to the side, like it’s glancing back over its shoulder, the curve of the skull glowing white in the light from the window.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Fusco hears himself whisper, voice small and ragged. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure slips around the corner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, well, what’s he supposed to do? Sit here in the dark with his thumb up his ass? He follows at a respectful distance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thing he notices, right away, is that he barely feels anything. Usually, he feels them before he sees them. Like a breath on the back of his neck. He doesn’t need to turn around and look, he just knows. It’s the pressure of them, the way they went, the emotions they clutch at.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From this figure, he gets almost nothing. Cold, terrible cold, on his nose and fingertips. The scent of wet, dark earth and pine. You could get that off of anybody buried in winter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s just so faint, like a radio with the volume turned way down low so all you get is static and whispers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s like what regular people get. Not him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sees the figure gliding just out of his line of sight down the stairs, leans over the railing in time to see it slip into the parlor and shut the door behind it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s this awful, horrible, stinging familiarity to it. If it weren’t for the total absence of footsteps, the silent fluidity of the figure’s movement, it’d almost, Fusco thinks, be like following a </span>
  <em>
    <span>guy</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Just a living guy in a house. That’s a scarier idea to him. With the dead, he knows where he is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Generally speaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just want you to know,” Fusco says out loud as he takes the steps slow and careful, “that I’m all ears. If you mean to show me something down here, I’m ready to look. But I want you to know you can talk to me, if you want. You’re coming in faint, but I can listen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He holds still for a moment, gripping the railing and listening as hard as he can. Nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The parlor door stands shut, silent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the moment before he touches the door, he catches the barest whiff of gasoline and ash, a blast of heat, a ringing in his ears. Just a flicker, not anything he can hold on to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door swings open when he presses on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure in the parlor, leaning up against the fireplace with his elbow on the mantle, is not the same one he followed here. Just a dark, flat cut-out against the orange glow of the fire roaring in the grate, but it’s not hard to see this is a different guy. This guy’s a little shorter than the death’s head figure, a little thicker too. A handsome profile, strong chin, hair like a Kennedy. He seems to be watching Fusco. Seems to be expecting something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, pal.” Fusco guides the door shut behind him. “You, um, you been here long?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything I can get for you?” He looks askance, makes eye contact with the gilt bar cart in the corner of the room. “A drink or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure’s head tilts a single degree, as if considering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, he’s not getting much off of this guy. But he’s still here. He seems to be listening. That’s something. “Harold, the guy who lives here, he asked me to run interference for you and, uh...I guess your buddies. He won’t tell me what’s going on, but my guess is you’ve been giving him some kind of grief. I was kinda hoping to get your side of the story.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence. They’re not all chatty, he knows. But generally speaking, you don’t become a ghost unless you’ve got something to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He presses on. “I know for you to be hanging around here, you must have something on your mind. You might be angry. You might be in pain. You might have specific beef with Harold, or maybe something bad happened to you here in this house. I’m here to help you out with that, as best I can.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unsettling to hear it speak, without an intake of breath to signal it. Without a sign of duress. He talks like they’re at a cocktail party, like they’re chatting over champagne. “You said you’re prepared to listen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco nods, folds his hands behind his back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your mistake,” the figure says, “is believing that your role here is to negotiate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno if it’s a mistake, as such. It’s what I was hired for. But maybe I’m wrong about that,” Fusco says. “Why do you think I’m here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure turns a little and for a second, the light shows him the man’s back, suit burned to ashes, skin red. “Do you truly believe,” he says, voice full up with empty warmth, “that there is no blood on your hands?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His breath catches hard and jagged in his throat. He whispers, “The hell are you talking about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sharp creak from behind him. Fusco whirls around with a tiny, formless shout.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harold Finch stands in the doorway, squinting and exhausted, a flashlight in his hand. “What on earth are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” The pounding of his heart subsides. He’s cold, suddenly, and the orange glow of the fire is gone. It’s just him and Finch now, alone in the dark parlor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s conscious, uncomfortably so, that Finch is wearing a thick dressing gown over a pair of pajamas that have lapels and cuffs, while he’s down to his boxers and a faded Zeppelin shirt. A dress code violation, if ever there was one. He straightens up, wishes he had pockets to stick his hands in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saw something,” he admits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something?” Finch prompts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And...sure. Why not? It’s what he’s there for, right? “I saw at least two guys,” Fusco explains. “Didn’t get too good a look at either of them. One was walking around in the hallway. The other was set up here in the parlor with a fire going, and we had a little talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s eyebrows lift but he doesn’t actually look surprised. “And the subject of that conversation?” he asks as he makes for the fireplace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was just standing there, at first. I told him that I was here to investigate if there were any spirits in the house, and maybe act as a negotiator between you and them. I told him I was ready to listen if he wanted to tell me something. And he told me that I was wrong about why I was here.” He takes a small, struggling breath and folds his arms across his chest. “Why’d you hire me, man?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch kneels down gingerly by the fireplace and touches his fingertips to the stone. “To confirm the legitimacy of my experience,” he says, rubbing old soot between his fingers. “And, if possible, bring an end to it. The fireplace is quite cold, by the way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I figured it would be,” Fusco grumbles. “How’s this for confirmation? Is any of this doing it for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch considers. “It’s a start,” he says at last. Slipping into that faintly manic host persona, he asks, “Will you be able to go back to sleep? I can offer you a sleeping pill, or a nightcap if that will help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No thanks,” Fusco answers. “I can...I’ll drift off to sleep on my own. Or I won’t. Just gimme a second to catch my breath, OK?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s face falls, very slightly. An emotion like pity, or like regret, flickers across his face for just a second. He steps out of the room and lets the parlor door swing shut, closing out the beam of his flashlight. In the dark, Fusco sinks forward, hands on his knees, breathing deep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’d you mean by that?” Fusco whispers to the dark, empty parlor. “What’d you mean about blood on my hands?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No answer. Just an empty room, a cold fireplace. Not even a whiff of gasoline.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He barely sleeps and by the time the sun creeps over the hill and the dawn turns pink and misty, Fusco’s out of bed, dressed, and striding across the dew-drenched lawn. </span>
</p><p><em><span>I could drive,</span></em><span> he thinks to himself as he crunches down the driveway, passing his car.</span> <span>He could get in the car right now. He’s got his phone in his hand, his keys and wallet in his pocket. Everything else is a recoupable loss. He could leave right now and nobody, especially not Finch, could stop him. He doesn't need the money that bad.</span></p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But he does.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He’s got rent to pay. Winter’s coming and Lee needs new skates. He keeps walking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He walks until he gets far enough down the gravel driveway that a single bar of service flickers to life on his phone. He’s hit with a burst of emails and a string of increasingly nervous texts from Lee asking where he is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He answers Lee first: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hey pal, I know you’re asleep but I wanted to let you know I’m OK. No service at the house so I might be hard to reach. I’ll come out here to text you every day. Call your mom if it’s an emergency.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s barely into his unread emails - a new client with a ghost who turns the taps on and floods the bathrooms, an old client who wants a fourth round of negotiations with her ghostly roommate - when Lee answers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m awake! Totally thought you got murdered by ghosts.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A sudden pulse of guilt at the idea of his son waiting up, playing chicken with his phone all night. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bad news. I’m fine,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he replies. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This place is insane. Look.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He sends a burst of pictures: dark corridors, bizarre curios, the pink cupcake bedroom, the house itself rising up sinisterly through the early morning fog.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a few seconds, Lee replies </span>
  <em>
    <span>F.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t swear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thats not what that means dad.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And then, </span>
  <em>
    <span>See any ghosts yet?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he answers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>A couple. I’m researching today. Hope it won’t take too long.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>See u on halloween?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He cracks a small grin. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Definitely. I promise.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Love u.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Love you too.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He stays out a while, hands deep in his jacket pockets, and basks in the cool morning air. In this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he returns to the house, he hears faint clattering in the kitchen. He comes in to find Finch hard at work, a canvas apron thrown over yet another immaculate three-piece suit as he beats eggs to a luxuriant froth in a glass bowl. Already in the stove is a pan of sizzling bacon and another pan, empty and expectant except for a melting pat of butter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Those for me?” Fusco asks, leaning in the doorway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s beater comes to an abrupt stop and the look on his face seems to say to Fusco that Finch is one of those people who wakes up early as a point of pride and resents this challenge to his throne. “Exploring the grounds, were you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, just texting my son.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> A tiny change comes over Finch’s face, like softness but also like shame. “How old is he?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Twelve.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch nods as though that means something to him. “Does he…” Finch hesitates. “About…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“About what I do for work?” Fusco asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, he knows. It’s not a family business or anything. He’s not, uh, like me.” And god, what a relief that was. He’d been waiting on the sidewalk for Lee’s hockey practice to wrap up when this guy, bloodied and shattered from a car accident, started screaming in Fusco’s face asking what the fuck he was looking at and Lee, eight years old and grinning despite a skinned knee, walked right through him like he wasn’t there. There’s a weight that comes off your shoulders when you look down at your kid and know he’ll never have to deal with the horrible shit you had to go through. “But I kinda think it’s a relief to him,” Fusco says, “that I’m doing this instead. He doesn’t have to worry about me getting shot on the job.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch squints at Fusco, curious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He explains, “I used to be a cop before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” He begins beating the eggs again, almost compulsively. “Since you’re here, then I suppose these </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>for you. You were up so late, I assumed you’d be dead to the world for at least a little longer.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kinda thought the same thing about you,” Fusco says around an unfortunately timed yawn. “Sorry about waking you up last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I wasn’t asleep.” Finch gives Fusco a weak smile. “I get a few hours each night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco pulls out one of the wooden chairs, a little plainer and simpler and more comfortable than the ones in the dining room. “I guess you want to hear more about what I saw.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His back stiffens. “It’s a little early for ghost stories, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not for me,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then, by all means,” Finch sighs over the hiss of the beaten eggs pouring into the pan, “tell me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I woke up in the middle of the night. Not sure what did it. My door opening, maybe. But I locked it before I went to sleep, so...I dunno, can you think of a reason why the lock might not work?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch twists to look back at him. “I confess I haven’t tested the locks in my guest room.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a big deal,” Fusco dismisses with a wave. “I was wondering why my door was open when I saw a figure pass by my doorway. So I got up and followed it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Did</span>
  </em>
  <span> you?” Finch answers, intrigued in a judgmental kind of way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco shrugs. “Well, sometimes they wanna show you something. It led me downstairs to the parlor. You know if there was ever a fire in this house? A house fire, I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch looks mildly startled. “No. Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Big fire in the fireplace. The guy in the room had burns all down his back. It’d be stupid not to ask.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brow furrows, curious. “What was he like?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno. Quiet. Kinda friendly, maybe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s mouth twitches. “Friendly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not really,” Fusco admits. “It’s kinda like if you recorded somebody being friendly - like real genuine and nice - but then you chopped up that recording and made a soundboard out of it. The </span>
  <em>
    <span>sound </span>
  </em>
  <span>of friendliness, but no real warmth anymore. Is that making sense?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch doesn’t answer yes or no, but the crease in his brow deepens. “And the other figure?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other figure. The white skull floating in the dark. That smell like snow, like blood, like gunpowder. “Dunno,” Fusco says. “Tall? Didn’t get a good look.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happens now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco leans forward at the table. “Kinda depends on you, pal. I saw what I saw, and that’s all I’m working with. If what you were talking about last night - confirmation, or whatever - if that’s all you need, I think you got it. If what you need is somebody to...to fix this, to work out a deal with the other folks that live here, I’m gonna need more from you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch whirls around, slams the pan onto the stove with a clatter. “If it’s a question of remuneration…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not about that,” Fusco interrupts. “You’re paying me hand over fist; I’m not asking for more. What I need is for you to tell me what happened to you. What you’ve been seeing. I know that can be hard,” he acknowledges as Finch lifts up the frying pan gently, as if to unslam it. “You might feel like you’re going crazy. You might have a hard time even thinking about it. This all might be wrapped up in stuff that makes you feel ashamed or guilty. But if I’m gonna help you, I’m gonna need to know what you know. ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see.” His hands twist in his canvas apron. “Can you wait? Just a little bit longer? I need…” He trails off, searching. What </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>he need?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How about this?” Fusco offers. “I’m gonna go into town. Hit up the library, the public records office. See what I can learn about this place. I’ll do what I can for you based on that. After that, either you be honest with me or you pay me for my time and I walk. Got it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch nods. “That’s...I believe that’s a fair arrangement. But there’s no need to go into town.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No?” Fusco answers. “You know most of this stuff isn’t digitized, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m well aware. Mind the eggs, will you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure, but...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch exits the room in a flurry, leaving Fusco to stand at the stove and fold the eggs over and over and wonder just what kind of a person Finch is anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A smart guy, for sure. Almost no sense of humor, unless you catch him in the right way. Total lockjaw of the soul. A pedant. A home security enthusiast. An amateur historian. An even more amateur chef. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s a nice kitchen,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thinks to himself. Lots of room, sun pouring through the windows, a look out into the garden that’s gone all to seed. The window in Fusco’s kitchen is always in shadow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He listens to the sizzle of bacon. The chirping of birds. And another sound, deep underneath, like a hushed conversation. It takes him a while to notice it: the gold horn of a speaking tube next to the stove. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sets the spatula aside and moves closer. The whispers grow louder, unmistakable. He presses his ear to the tube and holds his breath, desperate to pick out any one word from the cascade.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, dear, they’re overcooked,” Finch says from directly behind him, making him jump and knock his head into the speaking tube.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Christ,” Fusco mutters, rubbing the side of his head. “Can you wear a bell or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I apologize if I scared you,” Finch says, in the process of hastily setting a large bankers’ box overflowing with papers onto the kitchen table. “Just let me save the eggs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I, uh.” Fusco stumbles backward, making space for Finch at the stove. “I heard something in the speaking tube.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could be mice,” he says with a grimace. “I haven’t seen many since I moved in, but it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>getting colder.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right.” He peers into the banker’s box and starts flipping through papers. Birth certificates, death records, leases, scanned newspaper articles. “Christ. You went comprehensive. This is…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everything I could find on the house, anyone who ever lived in it, and anything that might have occurred on the land before or after the house was built. I wanted to be...thorough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You read all this?” Fusco asks, laying out papers on the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Every word.” Finch sounds real proud of himself. “But I’d prefer to have your professional opinion, untainted by my own biases. I’m sorry that this creates more work for you, but...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Fusco says, setting aside a couple of birth certificates. “I get it. You need to know I come by this stuff honestly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the stove, Finch blinks at him with pale, meek eyes. “It’s not as though I don’t trust you. I’m just trying to be...scientific.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I get it, man. It’s a smart way to do things. It’s not...” He trails off, composing himself. “Most of my clients just want to tell me everything they’ve seen and have me pat their hand and tell ‘em they’re not crazy. Any asshole could do that.” He rolls his shoulders. “I don’t really mind being put to the test like this. I just wanna compare notes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch nods thoughtfully and takes two plates down from a high shelf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sit at the kitchen table together and eat breakfast. The only sound is the clink of their silverware, the gentle rustling of Fusco turning over papers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry I screwed up your eggs, by the way,” he says, halfway through a brief article about the house’s construction. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch waves him off. “No need to apologize. I’ve been so preoccupied by doing them </span>
  <em>
    <span>right </span>
  </em>
  <span>I’d forgotten that I actually prefer them a bit firmer.” The tines of his fork scrape idly across the china. “It’s how my father made them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah? Me too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Fusco’s not thinking about the house’s construction or how he likes his eggs or how Finch shoots a shy, tentatively warm glance at him from across the table. He’s thinking about what he overheard in the speaking tube, the words he painstakingly picked out of the slithering mass of whispers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Numbers. They were whispering strings of numbers.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The kitchen becomes his makeshift office, papers coating the table and spreading onto the wall once Finch gives him the OK to tape things up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He decides to look at things chronologically, generationally. There’s the history of the land: an academic paper suggesting there may have been a Lenape settlement somewhere around five miles from here, but not much else. Then there’s the stuff written about the building of the house itself. Like Finch says, it’s a unique construction and built by rich people, so there’s a lot to wade through, from letters written at the time of the construction to articles written as recently as last year: </span>
  <em>
    <span>10 Crumbling Victorian Manors You Need To Look At</span>
  </em>
  <span> or whatever. That’s when he gets into the family stuff: birth records, marriage announcements, death records, photographs, diaries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco arranges it in strata, generations into generations into temporary lodgers into long stretches of nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’d be terrible to go in blind, but he discovers quickly that Finch is diligent with a highlighter. Half these papers, he’s not even sure what he’s supposed to be looking at until he gets to the paragraph circled in neon where it mentions the business interests of one of the sons or quotes one of the temporary renters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What surprises him most of all is how boring it is. There’s a handful of folks who passed away of old age at a time where, when people died, they died at home. There’s a lady of the house who died giving birth to kid number 5. There’s a stable master, who died of a kick in the head by an enterprising horse at the age of 23. If any of these people were holding ancient grudges, it’s not in these papers.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And it’s not here,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thinks to himself. He doesn’t feel those old people dying of pneumonia or heart attacks, slipping away in their sleep. He doesn’t feel that lady who died giving birth, grief-stricken and heavy. If they’re in this house, he can’t feel them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he hasn’t been to the stables yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco looks up to consider his partner at the table. After breakfast, Finch had washed the dishes industriously, clapped his wet, chapped hands together, and said something like, “I’ll leave you to it.” But he didn’t. He kept sneaking back into the room to use the electric kettle, or to ask if Fusco possibly needed anything, or just to stand in the doorway, wringing his pale hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco wasn’t really sure what was happening - whether Finch didn’t trust him alone in the house or whether Finch was spying on his research progress - but it all became clear when he tiptoed through the kitchen door apologetically, a laptop folded to his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” he asked. “I’ll try not to interrupt.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course,” Fusco had told him. “I don’t mind the company.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A tiny little flicker of relief crossed his face and everything fell into place. Rattling around in this big house all alone, with nothing but Who The Fuck Knows What for company. Guy’s lonely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Case in point, there’s a little more color in his face now, a little less stiffness in his shoulders. He’s relaxed, almost, until he notices Fusco looking. He blinks, folds his careful hands. “Can I help you with something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just wondering what you’re working on with no internet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh. Coding.” He tilts his head towards Fusco’s mess of papers. “How’s your own work going?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco wobbles a hand noncommittally. “Not quite seeing what I’m looking for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes flicker to the pages, to Fusco’s face. He leans in, interested almost in spite of himself. “And what </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>you looking for, if I may ask?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The kinds of things that make ghosts, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch’s mouth twitches ever so slightly, sly and mocking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ghosts are just like anybody. If something happens to them - somebody hurts them, they lose something they care about, they got regrets, they got guilt - they relive all that, in their heads. It kinda rewires the way they think. Sometimes they don’t even realize it - they wonder ‘Why am I that way?’, ‘Why do I do that thing?’ - but when they unravel it all, they find that they’re just trying to get away from old pain. Something that hurt them so bad, it changed them. The way you break out of that reliving is, you learn to make peace with that old pain somehow. You let go. Ghosts are people who can’t let go. That’s all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch warms a shivering hand on his mug of tea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anyway,” Fusco says. “I’m looking for that pain. Some kind of violent death, a regret, a mistake. And I’m…” He ruffles one corner of a stack of papers with his thumb. “I’m not really finding that here. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” he assures Finch. “Just because something awful happened here doesn’t mean it made the news, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch gives him a solemn nod. “I suppose that’s true.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco pushes back his chair and stretches with a groan. “I wanna go get some fresh air. Check out the property. You, um,” Fusco looks around. “You got beer in the house?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finch blinks. “Pardon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not for me,” Fusco hastily adds. “I’m five years sober. Just, uh, something I wanna try.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Based on the frown, Finch isn’t buying it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco smiles a little, trying to disarm. “Trust me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gives a thoughtful sigh. “I think there’s some at the back of the fridge.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The stable doors swing open at a gentle press from his hand. A smell billows out, sweetly rotting straw and a century’s worth of horseshit. The stalls stand empty, their doors swaying gently in the gust of wind that slips in after Fusco. The rafters are filled with ancient hanging tackle and sleeping pigeons.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he </span>
  <em>
    <span>feels </span>
  </em>
  <span>it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He almost laughs, he’s so relieved. He was starting to think he’d lost his extra sense. But as the door swings closed behind him, right away, he feels a toothache that isn’t his. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels a strength, the lightning bolt of vitality that comes from being 23 again for just a second. He smells sweat, his own and the horse’s. He can feel the horse, thrumming with anxiety, but he’s just confident enough to be stupid so he isn’t afraid. He’s thinking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>After I shoe this horse, I’ll sneak by the kitchen and beg a quick drink off the cook.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He’s thinking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe she’ll have leftovers to spare me, since money’s been so tight.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He’s thinking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I ought to ask for a raise, now that I’ve got a kid of my own.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>His daughter is one year old, her name is Maisie, she has dark brown curls and shrieks with laughter when he scoops her up and holds her high above his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sickening crack, a bright burst of pain as a skull that isn’t his breaks like an eggshell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he comes to, Fusco is clutching a stall door to stay upright, blinking away stars. Slowly, he sinks to the dirty concrete floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, buddy,” he mumbles, rubbing his temples. “I was hoping you’d be here.” He gropes around in his jacket pocket. “Brought you a little something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air around him crackles with interest as he takes out the bottle. The beer’s some kind of fancy stout, so dark as to be black. Not what he’d choose, but he bets some guy in the 1900s would be into it. He uses the bottle opener on his keychain to open it up, sends the metal cap spinning. He sets it down beside him, a healthy arm’s length away, lets his head fall back against the stall wall, and shuts his eyes, waiting for the ringing in his head to subside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t wait on me,” Fusco groans, pressing his palm to his forehead as a migraine splits his head in two. “I don’t drink myself. But that’s more for you, pal. Listen.” He shifts, stretches his legs out across the floor, feels the air grow thick around him. “If you got the time, I’ve got a couple questions for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ask away,” says a gentle voice right beside him. “I got nothin’ else to do.” There’s a wet sound, a horrible sucking noise. “Jesus Christ, that’s mighty sophisticated. Better even than what Mr. Finney had in the old days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Fusco says, opening one eye, “you remember the old days?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stablehand looks rough, but he expected that. It’s hard to look pretty after a horse kicks you in the skull; that’s just a fact of nature. Guy’s got a full-on dent in his head, a flat spot that shouldn’t be flat. But aside from his offset jaw, his bloodshot eyes, the guy probably wasn’t bad looking in life. Dark curls like the little girl in the vision, dark eyes, a strong nose before it was broken. A young, handsome guy cut short. That’ll do it. That’ll make a ghost. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” he says. His jaw is bad to look at, the way it shudders when he speaks. “I got a long memory.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco leans in. “I wanna know about the other ghosts in the house. Who they are, when they showed up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ghost of the stablehand takes a drink and consults his long memory. “Well, there’s the dappled mare. Runs through the orchard on moonlit nights. Same path every time, like as if she was on a track. She’s been here even longer than I have; the groundskeeper told me that one back when I first came to work at the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then there’s Miss Claire, Mr. Finney’s daughter. ‘Course, she wasn’t a miss anymore by that time, but that’s how I remember her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s the lady who died giving birth?” Fusco asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nods solemnly, takes a pull of the beer. “That’s the one. Family was real broken up about it. I don’t go up to the house as it’s not my place, but I’d see her through the window sometimes, or tagging along after the kids when they played in the garden. She left the house when they did.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about the other people at the house?” Fusco asks. “The guy with the burned back. The, uh.” He hesitates. His voice shivers. “The bald guy. Real tall. Where’d they come from?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” The stablehand goes stonefaced. “Those aren’t people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco’s heart thuds. “What do you mean, they’re not people?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno what those things are,” he says into the mouth of the bottle. “And I don’t wanna know. All I know is, the sooner that funny little fella up at the house packs up and takes his friends with him, the better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco sits up straight. “They came when Harold did?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is Harold the little clerk up at the house? Putters around the garden with a limp?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to imagine Finch with a sunhat, gardening gloves, a little trowel. “Guy I’m thinking of wears glasses and nice suits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s him,” confirms the stablehand. “The clerk. They came along when he did. I never saw them before and I hope to god I never see them again after he’s gone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve only seen them in the house so far,” Fusco says. “Do they come out here too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stablehand furrows his dented brow. “Don’t you see ‘em?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco looks around. It’s just the two of them there in the stable, just the pigeons cooking in the rafters. “Should I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stablehand sighs, exasperated, and seizes Fusco by the wrist with one calloused, icy hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This has happened before and it’s always awful. Always an invasion. A bolt of cold fire splitting his brain in two, shattering his vision. He can’t focus his eyes; he can’t see. He tries to rip his arm away, but the stablehand’s grip is bruising, punishing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You see now?” he says in Fusco’s ringing ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And gradually, he can. His vision fills with scattered light that slowly fades to divided shapes, impossible colors, but tangible vision. Like a 3D movie with the glasses off. He can see now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re not alone in the stable, the two of them. There are people, the shapes of people, standing in the center aisles, crowded in the stables, flowing out the doors, pressed shoulder to shoulder so there’s no room to move. No room to breathe. Fusco’s heart starts to hammer, his breath goes thin. He can hear himself gasping, desperate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stablehand releases Fusco’s wrist and his vision corrects like a stretched rubber band snapping back into place, sending him wheezing to the floor, clutching his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You see?” the stablehand says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco pushes away, scrapes himself across the floor until he can get his feet under him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, you saw ‘em,” says the stablehand as Fusco makes a break for the exit. “They ain’t people. You gotta get rid of ‘em!” he calls after Fusco.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco doesn’t look back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hasn’t run from a ghost in a long time. He hasn’t had to. He’s been seeing ghosts his whole life and at this point, they’re as natural to him as the lonely, as the insane, as the grief-stricken. As anyone who haunts. He’s never felt they could hurt him. Not physically anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the stablehand is right. These things aren’t ghosts. And there’s hundreds of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s running through the orchard now, staggering over twisted roots, pushing aside gnarled branches, kicking rotted apples on the grass. Just running, not even sure where he’ll go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sees her before she sees him. He’s running at full speed when this woman steps casually out from behind a tree and bends to pluck a bruised apple from the ground, and Fusco has to skid to a stop on the wet grass to keep from barreling into her. She jumps back with a surprised yelp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry!” Fusco wheezes, hands on knees. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m just…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” she’s protesting, “No, I’m sorry. I almost walked right into you. I…” She trails off, staring down at Fusco with a furrowed brow. “Are you OK?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a deep breath, gasps out, “I’m fine,” and gives standing upright a shot. He gets his first look at her then. She’s blonde and small and there’s a sort of honest prettiness to her. Something about the redness of her knuckles, the comfort of her blue cardigan, the practical flatness of her white sneakers. Fusco tells her, “I just…I dunno, I thought I saw something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman grins at him. “You didn’t see the barn ghost, did you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shrugs. “I guess a stableboy died in there back in the 1800’s or something? One of those old ghost stories.” </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He’s actually a grown man, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Fusco refrains from saying. “I didn’t know anybody else was on the estate,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gives him a small, sly smile. “You don’t really think that guy -” and here she jerks her thumb up at the house “- runs this place all by himself, do you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t sure what to think,” Fusco confesses. “Some of it looks great, but some…” He lets that some hang. The orchard’s a mess of dead leaves and squirrel-gnawed apples. He doesn’t want to insult her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she doesn’t seem insulted. “No, you’re right. It’s a mess. I do what I can, but…it’s a big place. Nobody’s taken any care of it for a long time.” She tosses her apple into the air, catches it as it falls, takes a big, crunchy bite of it. “That might be the last ripe apple in the orchard,” she says, wiping juice from the corner of her mouth. There’s a small, dark bruise on the back of her hand. “I hate seeing them all go to rot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You local?” he asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs, small and surprised. “Oh! No. I came here a couple of years ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you’ve worked on the estate all that time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a beautiful place,” she says. “It’s a lot like where I grew up. But I admit, I miss the city.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Know what you mean. I’m in a hurry to get back there myself,” and then, “So, wait, </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>you work here?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s something about being surrounded,” she’s saying, as though he didn’t speak. “Being so immersed in people – real people – that it could almost make you forget.” There’s a bruise over her eye, a bruise high on her temple, a curious bend to her arm. The bruise on her wrist is thick, black and purple. Her head sits at a strange, terrible angle on her neck. “Now the only real people for miles are you and Harold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She flickers like a bad signal and suddenly, she’s gone. Fusco’s alone in the orchard, except for a screaming crow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The apple sits on the ground, undisturbed and unbitten.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his pocket, Fusco’s phone buzzes in one short burst. He listens, silently, numbly, for a long second. And then he fumbles for it, desperate, frantic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are three missed calls from Lee and a cascade of texts. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dad, can you call me?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Just call me when you can.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Call me as soon as you get this. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco calls him back with shaking fingers. He picks up halfway through the first ring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lee?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A second of breathy hesitation. “Hey, Dad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happened? Are you OK?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I’m just…” He swallows, thick and heavy. “Listen, are </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>OK?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine,” he lies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you still at that house?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m outside,” he says. “In the orchard. Lee, what happened?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK. OK. Um.” He’s pacing. Fusco can tell. He’s pacing little circles around his room, kicking clothes aside. “I don’t know how to…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fusco sinks, very quietly, to the grass beneath an apple tree, and stares up at the sky through the knobbly branches. “I’m listening,” he says. “Take your time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK,” he says again. “I showed Chris the pictures that you sent me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Chris.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Fusco flicks back through his mental rolodex. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Little wiry kid. Smart, nerdy, but funny. He was kinda relieved when Lee brought Chris over the first time. Good that his son has at least one friend who doesn’t have a hockey puck where his brain should be.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Uh huh?” he encourages.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And he was like, ‘Let’s blow ‘em up and see if we can see any ghosts,’ and…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You find one?” he asks, and he can’t help but sound too casual for Lee’s somber, quavering tone, because Lee looks for ghosts in his pictures all the time. Sometimes he even finds them. He’s never anything but excited.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” He sputters to a stop. “I’m just gonna send it to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s the sound of teenage boys bickering, short and frantic, and the phone buzzes against his ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to recognize the photo. It’s a tiny fragment, blown up huge. It’s one he took down the hallway, with its dark shadows and its walls studded with curios and the mirror at the end. He remembers, because he stood aside, trying not to be reflected. Didn’t quite succeed; the picture focuses on the mirror and he can see his own shoulder, his own ear, his own hair in the lower left corner. He’s about to explain that to Lee when he sees what he’s supposed to see. The shape over his shoulder. Long and thin and dark: black leather jacket. Pale face, head shaved close to the gleaming white skull. A face he recognizes. A face he knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, carefully, he presses the phone back to his ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dad?” Lee is saying, close to tears. “Is that Uncle Jimmy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he tries to say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he tries to say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he tries to say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t you worry</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but all those empty words just get stuck in his throat, because he has a picture of Jimmy Stills on his phone and he’s very fucking worried.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The door opens with a loud bang. No delicacy for the Victorian carvings or for the rich man’s sensibilities. “Finch?” Fusco calls out from the foyer. “We need to talk.”</p><p>No answer. Just dried leaves blowing in his wake, rattling around his feet.</p><p>“Finch?” he calls out again, making for the kitchen.</p><p>There, he finds a chair laid out flat on the floor and a mug of tea spilled over on the table, seeping into Harold’s laptop, Fusco’s papers. His heart thuds. “Harold,” he calls, “if you can hear me, you gotta answer.”</p><p>But Finch doesn’t answer.</p><p>He bursts through the kitchen door and into the dining room, where he finds a single chair knocked aside, as though hip-checked from its proper place. Through the next door into the parlor, undisturbed except for the edge of the Turkish rug, flipped up in some kind of struggle. From there, he runs through the door that opens at the foot of the stairs and immediately crunches onto shattered porcelain. There’s an end table knocked to the wood floor, a vase in pieces. <em> Probably walking on hundreds of dollars right now </em>, he thinks as he kicks the shards aside. He sticks his head in the library, the music room, and sees only places where Finch isn’t. He takes the stairs to the second floor.</p><p>He checks the hallways, bedrooms, bathrooms, Harold’s neatly-kept study. No sign of him.</p><p>Fusco’s ready to check outside. He’s ready to call the police.</p><p>Then he remembers the hatch to the third floor.</p><p>As it turns out, he doesn’t need to break down the door or even go inside. Finch is just beneath it, sprawled halfway down the stairs up to the third floor, a limp and disheveled wreck curled against the railing. There’s a dark, bloody little gash high on his temple. An answering spot on the banister.</p><p>Fusco climbs the steps and kneels beside him, pats Finch’s pale face. Finch whines, startles away from the touch, but only closes his eyes tighter. He’s at least a little bit conscious. That’s something.</p><p>“OK,” Fusco whispers, slipping an arm around Finch. “Let’s get you someplace comfortable.”</p><p>Finch is a little heavier, a little sturdier than Fusco thought he’d be. Something about his demeanor - the glasses, the wispy hair, the fussy attitude - made him imagine Finch was the kind of guy who could get blown away by a stiff breeze. Should’ve known better. Still, he’s not all that difficult to lift and it’s not far to Finch’s bedroom. By the time Fusco is laying him out on that fancy linen bedspread, Finch is blinking up at him with confused, watery eyes. </p><p>“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he murmurs, futilely batting Fusco’s hand away as he moves to examine the cut on Finch’s forehead.</p><p>“You got whacked on the head,” he says, leaning in close. It’s not bleeding much; the blood’s already gone tacky and thick.</p><p>Finch’s eyebrows knit together. “By <em> whom </em>?”</p><p>“By you, I think, while you were on the run. From a ghost, I’m guessing.” Fusco sighs, wipes his hands on his thighs. “I can drive you to the hospital, if you want. Just to be safe.”</p><p>In a tone that will brook no argument, Finch says, “There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen.”</p><p>Fusco sighs. “OK. Sit tight.” </p><p><em> It’s not right, </em> Fusco thinks as he trots down the stairs. <em> He’s supposed to be the pissy one right now. Where does Finch get off being pissed off at him when Fusco just princess-carried his ass to bed? </em></p><p>He can’t be going soft on Finch just because he’s hurt, Fusco tells himself as he walks over shards of broken vase again on his way towards the kitchen, just because he’s a prickly little son of a bitch who doesn’t know what’s good for him. </p><p>It doesn’t matter if Finch is lonesome, if he’s wounded, if he’s horribly sad. He’s hiding shit, and he could be putting Fusco in danger. </p><p>Fusco putters around the kitchen for a long, fretful minute before he finds the first aid kit under the farmhouse sink. While he’s there, he grabs a dish towel and wets it under the sink, grabs the electric kettle on the kitchen counter to pour Finch a new cup of tea. On the way back upstairs, he remembers the bar cart in the parlor and takes a quick detour. Finch is the kinda guy who’s too fancy, too rarified for labels, but there’s a crystal decanter of some kind of brown liquor, and Fusco figures it could take the edge off of whatever headache Finch is nursing right now.</p><p>“Isn’t that just like a fucking drunk?” someone growls right up against his ear, wet and close and horribly familiar. </p><p>Fusco twists away, barely avoids dropping the bottle, and finds himself nose to nose with Jimmy Stills. </p><p>He looks the same as the last time Fusco saw him. Pale and puffy, blood soaking through the front of his shirt. He still smells like pine, like earth, like the snow.</p><p>“Hhhhhhh…” Fusco chokes on the consonant, struggles to find his voice. “How’s it going, Jimmy?”</p><p>“Been better,” he says, and he sounds like he did back in the bad old days, like Fusco drove by his house and picked him up for work and now he’s putting his foot up on the dashboard of Fusco’s car. “You havin’ a nice life, Lionel?”</p><p>Fusco takes a step back, swallows. “I do OK.”</p><p>“Sure, you do OK.” His grin is kindly, mocking. “Back when I was looking after you, you were a detective, first class. People liked you. Fuck knows why. And now what are you? A shitty ghostbuster? A boardwalk psychic? I hope it was fuckin’ worth it.”</p><p>“Not like you left me much of a choice.”</p><p>“I gave you a choice, Lionel. I gave you the best opportunity you ever got in your miserable little life. I was offering you a foot in the door to brotherhood, power, a seat at the table. A shot at getting scum off the streets, for real. Money for your kid’s future. I handed you all of that on a silver platter and if you had any fuckin’ balls, you would’ve taken it.”</p><p>“Not sure it would’ve gone down like you said, Jimmy.”</p><p>“Fuckin’ excuse me, Miss Cleo. You wanna whip out your crystal ball and tell me how it was all supposed to shake out?”</p><p>“It doesn’t work like that,” he snaps. “But I don’t have to see the future to know that I couldn’t live with myself if I took you up on that deal.”</p><p>“Oh, sure. Man’s gotta have principles. And look where yours took you: from lovable loser to a creep who only talks to dead people. Your son must be so proud.”</p><p>“Yeah. He <em> is </em>proud.”</p><p>“He’s a stupid fucking kid. His dad’s a fucking failure. And if you thought what you did to me was bad, just wait until my friends and I get our hands on you.”</p><p>His nerves tighten to this taught, straining thread and he feels like the cap got pulled off this ancient, screaming fear, this terror of too much to drink and nowhere to run and a shallow hole in the woods and nobody ever knowing what happened to him. And the only thing that stops him from going right back to that place is a memory of an apple in the grass, undisturbed and unbitten.</p><p>Fusco closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and walks right into Stills.</p><p>There’s not even a cold spot, not even a feeling like you just walked under an icy shower. You get that sometimes, with a ghost. It’s just the same musty air, perfumed by a thousand brandy nightcaps, a thousand lit cigars. When he glances back over his shoulder, Stills is watching him, furious and disgusted. “Big words from a guy who ain’t even fucking here,” Fusco snarls, shouldering open the parlor door.</p><p>Stills doesn’t follow.</p><p>The headache hits him a few seconds later, when he’s halfway up the stairs. A sensation like a knife through the skull sends him down on one knee, sends him leaning on his arm. When he looks up, it’s through a forest of legs, an army crowded on the staircase. Fusco shuts his eyes, breathes deep until the headache subsides, until he can feel other things, like his jaw clenching or the tea seeping into his sleeve.</p><p>What is it they call it? The spirit of the staircase? That thing where you come up with that perfect comeback, that thing you should have said, when it’s all over and you’re already halfway down the stairs. He guesses that’s Stills’ comeback. “Nice one, jackass,” he spits as he struggles to his feet. </p><p>He shoulders Finch’s bedroom door open, starts laying his stuff down on the nightstand and on the cover beside where Finch’s legs are dangling off the side of the bed.</p><p>“Did you run into any trouble?” Finch asks him.</p><p>Fusco busily makes up for lost volume in the teacup with a few generous splashes of the brown liquor. “Nah. First aid kit was in the kitchen like you said.”</p><p>Finch accepts the teacup graciously when Fusco pushes it into his hand, but doesn’t drink. “I only ask,” he says, crossing his ankles rather primly, “because your nose is bleeding.”</p><p>Gingerly, Fusco touches the back of his hand to his upper lip. Sure enough, there’s a bright sweep of blood there, fresh and red. “Shit. Think I might be overextending myself.”</p><p>“Perhaps you should rest for a while,” Finch suggests. “I assure you, I can make short work of a superficial wound like…”</p><p>“I got it,” Fusco interrupts, sinking to his knees in front of Finch. “You really think I’m gonna leave you alone when you just got knocked out?”</p><p>“You needn’t trouble yourself with...” He cringes as Fusco runs an alcohol swab over his cut. “...With tending to me. It’s not within the terms of your contract.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Fusco sighs, trading the alcohol swab for a tube of neosporin. “About that. New contract, right here, between the two of us. Not a lot of stuff to read through, not a ton of legal mumbo jumbo. Just this: you tell me everything you know or I walk.”</p><p>Finch blinks at him, eyes pale and wide behind his glasses. “What happened to you? What did you see?”</p><p>Fusco ignores the question. “Here’s the one thing I know for sure, Mr. Finch. Your house ain’t haunted. You are. These things, whatever the fuck they are, they don’t give a shit about the house. They give a shit about you. Whatever the fuck you did to piss ‘em off. This isn’t a problem you can solve by moving, and you know it. You need help.”</p><p>Finch seems a little surprised, a little affronted. “What makes you so certain that the ghosts aren’t tied to the house?”</p><p>“Ghost told me. Not one of your guys; whatever the hell’s haunting you. A real one. Nothing for you to worry about,” he says in answer to Finch’s widening eyes. “He’s been here since he died in 18whatever. He told me those things didn’t show up until you did.”</p><p>It’s real interesting, to look in somebody’s eyes and know for a fact that they think you’re crazy. It hasn’t happened to Fusco in a while. “And did this ghost,” Finch says, real precise, real careful, like he’s trying to disarm a bomb, “give you any further...insights?”</p><p>A thin aftershock of pain knifes through Fusco’s head and he winces, rubs hard at the spot between his eyebrows. “He told me the things I’ve been seeing, they’re not...they’re not people and they never were.” He holds up a hand in defeat. “I don’t know what that means. I’m hoping you will.”</p><p>“I have no idea what that might mean,” Finch says. “But your <em> ghost </em>is wrong. The people you see in my home are all too real.”</p><p>Fusco blinks up at him, waits.</p><p>Finch struggles, shuffles his feet, sighs. “Each of the...entities? Will that term satisfy you?” When Fusco doesn’t answer, he presses on. “Each of the entities that I’ve experienced in my home correspond to real individuals who died due to premeditated violent acts. I’ve researched this extensively. Their deaths are on record; they are provable fact.” And he stares Fusco down, chest out, like he really just proved something. </p><p>He withers a little, as the seconds pass. </p><p>At last, Fusco says, “You seem awful sure of that. Should I be worried?”</p><p>Finch’s eyes widen. “I assure you, I was wholly uninvolved. Most of these deaths are unrelated. Besides meeting certain...broad criteria.”</p><p>“So if you’re not involved, what do they want you for?”</p><p>“I don’t...I don’t precisely know.” His blue-veined hands are flexing on his knees.</p><p>“I don’t <em> precisely </em>buy that, Mr. Finch,” he says. “And if you don’t stop lying to me about what you know, I’m gonna start believing that maybe you did something to deserve all this.”</p><p>“Well, perhaps I did,” Finch snaps. “But it’s not as though you’re blameless, is it?”</p><p>All the breath goes out of Fusco’s lungs. “<em> What? </em>”</p><p>“Detective James Stills. Missing, presumed dead. Well, some people presume. We know, don’t we, Detective Fusco?”</p><p>Fusco’s breath catches in his throat.</p><p>“They never found enough to prosecute you, of course, but it seems your friends at the precinct came to the same conclusions I did. That’s why you’re not a detective anymore, isn’t it?”</p><p>Fusco crouches real still, hands folded, deep in thought. “I’m gonna need you to stop acting like you know what you’re talking about.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. At last he says, “You knew. You did this on purpose.”</p><p>“You were…” Finch closes his eyes. Something like contrition flickers across his face. “I looked into them. The entities. The circumstances of their deaths. And there you were: a guilty party and a ghost hunter for rent. I’m not particularly a believer in fate, but...you were the sort of person I needed.”</p><p>“And you thought...what? I’d give your house an exorcism at a discount, seeing as we happened to piss off the same dead guy?”</p><p>Finch shakes his head. “I was never convinced of your abilities. I just needed...I suppose I needed someone who was primed to understand.”</p><p>“OK,” he whispers, rising to his feet. “I think I’m done here.”</p><p>“Mr. Fusco,” Finch says as Fusco turns away, “I...I understand. I can’t give you what you need, I hired you under spurious pretenses and...well, I respect your choice. I apologize for any pain I’ve caused you. And I’ll pay you for your trouble, of course.”</p><p>“Keep your money,” Fusco tosses over his shoulder. “I don’t give a shit.”</p><p>Very softly, he answers, “I insist.”</p><p>He turns back, sees Finch perched on the edge of the bed looking very small and very ashamed and profoundly sad. He says, “Good luck with your ghost problem, Mr. Finch.”</p><p>And then he leaves.</p>
<hr/><p>Well, not quite. All those little things he’s gotta take care of. Like consoling his terrified son. He dropped Lee in a hurry back in the orchard, too eager to confront Finch. For all the good that did him. </p><p>Now he’s pacing up and down the gravel road just outside the open gate, waiting for his hands to stop shaking and his voice to come back to him. So he can sound like a father to this kid. </p><p>There’s dark clouds billowing overhead, wind whipping the trees. He better get a call through before he gets drenched.</p><p>The call seems to take a thousand years to connect.</p><p>“Still OK?” he asks.</p><p>“Yeah, Dad. Yeah, I’m OK.” He swallows, takes a small breath. “Are you OK?”</p><p>“‘Course I am. I’m, uh. I’m gonna drive back home tonight. The job’s not working out.”</p><p>“<em> Really? </em>” and it’s a weird mix in Lee’s voice just then. Excitement, with a hint of disappointment.</p><p>Fusco fixes a grin on his mouth, forces his voice to be warm and gruff. “You wanted to get rid of me for the rest of the week?”</p><p>“No, I just...don’t we need the money?”</p><p>“Not this bad,” he says. “Trust me.”</p><p>“Did something bad happen?”</p><p>“No. No, nothing too bad.” Fusco searches for the words. “The client’s giving me the runaround. Putting up with this guy ain’t worth it to me.”</p><p>“But in the picture...was that...?”</p><p>“No, pal, I don’t think so.” He shuts his eyes, rubs at his temples. “I think it’s just...something that looks like him. Whatever’s going on in this house, I think it shows people things. Stuff they recognize, stuff they feel sad and guilty about. And it showed me Jim. That’s what I think.”</p><p>Softly, breathlessly, Lee asks, “Don’t you wonder what happened to him?”</p><p>“‘Course I do, pal. All the time.” Fusco clears his throat, pushes his cold hand deep in his jacket pocket. “Listen, don’t wait up. I gotta get packed up, I’m probably gonna hit rush hour traffic. I’m getting home late, but I am getting home tonight, OK?”</p><p>“OK.” Profound relief in his voice. “See you soon, Dad.”</p><p>“See you tomorrow. Love you, pal.”</p><p>“Love you too.”</p><p>He ends the call, stands there holding the phone for a while, staring at his son’s face on the lock screen. It’s an older photo, but he likes that goofy little-kid smile Lee has in this one. </p><p>“Home soon,” Fusco says to himself aloud.</p><p>The sky rumbles, dark and threatening.</p><p>He’s walking back down the driveway when it happens again. His vision flickers, splits, bends and suddenly he is standing in a crowd. He is standing on this driveway, shoulder to shoulder with shadows who stand in perfect, close-knit rows across the lawn, up the driveway, onto the wrap-around porch. They stand patient, horrible, their blank faces tilted back to focus on just one thing.</p><p>They’re looking at an open window on the second floor, at Finch climbing out. At Finch, wobbly and dismayed and shivering in the cold as he stands on the tilted second floor roof, tie whipping in the wind.</p><p>“What the hell are you doing?” Fusco calls out over the crowd, over the ringing in his ears.</p><p>Finch tugs his jacket close around his shoulders. “Go home, Mr. Fusco.”</p><p>Fusco breaks into a run.</p><p>It’s a long exposure, the longest he’s had so far. He’s never had to look at so many of them for so long. He’s never had to feel like his brain was being torn in half like this. He’s never felt like he had his ear pressed to the speaker at a Motorhead concert, like he was being rattled to his bones by invisible pressure.</p><p>Inside, they’re everywhere, packed wall-to-wall. They’re silent. They’re waiting. They’re trapped.</p><p>He feels that, overwhelmingly, <em> trapped </em>. Like a thousand fists beating on a locked door all together. The door’s gonna break. He’ll break too.</p><p>He has to shut his eyes, take the stairs on his hands and his knees. It’s not a relief, really. He can feel blood dripping down his lip, into his mouth.</p><p>On the second floor, he staggers to his feet again and starts dragging himself towards Finch’s bedroom door. He feels like he’s running the last mile of a marathon, like he’s just spent hours dashing his body to bits and now his shoes are full of blood and his lungs are on fire and all he wants is one of those shiny metal blankets and a tiny cup of water and someone to tell him he’s done an amazing thing and he never has to do it again. That won’t happen.</p><p>By the time he reaches Finch’s door, he’s nearly blind. Even the low lights in the hall seem too bright, too searingly awful. He pushes himself in alongside shadowy shapes and tries the doorknob.</p><p>Locked.</p><p>He starts pounding. He calls out, “Finch, open up!” He calls out, “Finch, I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.” He calls out, “Please let me try to help you.”</p><p>Next to Fusco, someone takes shape, leans against the doorframe. “What’s your plan here, Lionel?” asks the burned man, watching him with earnest, friendly interest. In the light, he’s a handsome older guy, blonde going gray. “You know you can’t go on like this. You know you’re hurting yourself by even being here. And after that whole speech about how you don’t care what he thinks and he’s not your problem, you’re back here trying to break down the door to help Harold? Because I guarantee you, my friend, he wouldn’t do that for you.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Fusco mumbles, shoving his shoulder into the door.</p><p>“Matter of fact, he’s done nothing but lie and mislead and keep his little secrets. That’s Harold’s thing. Secrets. Control.”</p><p>“You got a point you’re trying to make?”</p><p>“I’m suggesting that Harold might not be worth your time. If this is your way of atoning for the murder of your best friend, don’t bother. You’re not gonna wash that one off. Not with all the kind deeds in the world.”</p><p>The door unlocks with a click and swings open. Harold’s standing there, bedraggled and steely.</p><p>“<em> Thank you </em>, Nathan,” he snaps, grabbing Fusco by the sleeve and dragging him into the room. “That’s quite enough.”</p><p>With that, he slams the door in the burned man’s face. “Unbelievable,” Finch mutters under his breath as he turns to face Fusco. “Are you…? Oh, no, you’re bleeding again.” Finch sinks to one knee, picks up the remnants of the first aid kit. </p><p>“You can see them?”</p><p>“I can see <em> him </em>,” Finch corrects, rising up with a handful of gauze. “Did you see more than one?”</p><p>“Are you shitting me? There’s...I dunno how many. Are you telling me you could see-” and then he’s cut off by Finch pressing a wad of gauze up under his nose. Muffled, he asks, “What were you doing on the roof?”</p><p>“Getting some fresh air,” Finch murmurs. And then, “I know what it looked like, but you don’t need to be concerned. It’s just that I find they exert such a pressure. You must feel it too, like...it must be what being at the bottom of the ocean is like. All that weight pressing down.”</p><p>Fusco nods.</p><p>“I could feel them out there, waiting for me. And I think of all people, Mr. Fusco, you can empathize with an intense desire to not be in my house.”</p><p>Wordlessly, he grabs Finch’s wrist and squeezes gently. He understands.</p><p>“Would you mind terribly if we went back outside?” Finch asks. “I think we could both benefit from some fresh air.”</p><p>“Clouds look a little dangerous,” Fusco points out, voice all gummy and congested.</p><p>“Lightning will strike the <em> lightning rod </em> at the top of the house before it strikes us,” Finch points out as he steps gingerly out of the window. “But I will, of course, retreat inside at the first raindrop. Coming?”</p><p>Wordlessly, Fusco follows. </p><p>He can’t feel the relief Finch feels out here. Maybe it’s ‘cause he can still see the shadows.</p><p>“You really can’t see all them?” Fusco asks, gesturing at the crowd on the lawn. </p><p>Finch shakes his head. “I’ve never seen them all at once. Can you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Fusco whispers, voice thick. “Think a switch got thrown in my head. I see ‘em on and off, now. You know how many of them there are?”</p><p>“No,” Finch says. “But I have to imagine the numbers are...sobering.”</p><p>“I dunno if <em> sobering’s </em>the word,” Fusco murmurs.</p><p>Finch peers at him, wide-eyed, over his glasses. “Are they all very angry, do you suppose?”</p><p>Fusco thinks of how he felt in the crowd, the alien emotions that raced through him. “I don’t know if they can be angry, any more than they could be happy or scared. It’s more like they’re...resolved.”</p><p>“That’s not particularly comforting.”</p><p>“Comfort’s not what you hired me for,” Fusco points out. “You don’t seem like the kinda guy who’d take much satisfaction from a pat on the back and a couple of kind words. You seem like the kinda guy who needs to know the truth.”</p><p>“Oh.” Finch sighs. “I suppose you’re right.”</p><p>“Disappointed to hear that?”</p><p>“No, I suppose I’m just…” Finch pulls his jacket tight around his shoulders against the breeze. “If I were a person who could better tolerate half-truths, or allow myself to be excited by remote, happy possibilities, I think my life would’ve gone very differently.”</p><p>Fusco shrugs. “There’s upsides to being the kind of person who won’t swallow bullshit. You know?”</p><p>Finch grimaces at the metaphor, as though maybe he doesn’t know.</p><p>“It’s like. Um.” Fusco fishes for a metaphor. “Jimmy Stills. One of the guys haunting your house, you know?”</p><p>Finch nods. He does know. </p><p>“He was my best friend in the world. I mean <em> best </em>friend. Like we were kids; it’s embarrassing. But, I dunno, it was real. I never felt like myself before I met him. I always felt like I was trying to be some other, tougher, funnier guy. A guy who didn’t have all the…” He taps his head. “...All the head problems I had. But when I was with Jimmy, I was that guy. I didn’t have to fake it. It’s like he always saw the best of me, all the time. Nobody ever told me I was smart before Jimmy did. Nobody ever made me feel like I wasn’t a freak before he did. Nobody ever stuck by me, let me lean on him like he did. And I never felt guilty about any of that, ‘cause he leaned on me too. He was my family. I loved him.”</p><p>“Lionel, I am deeply sorry,” Finch says. “I accused you based on conjecture and speculation and…”</p><p>But Fusco’s falling forward now. He’s in confession. He has to let all of this go to someone, god, <em> someone </em>. “I still don’t know when he started to skim off the top. I made excuses for him, ‘cause I loved him. I believed in him. I told myself all those - what’d you call ‘em? - those half-truths. ‘Cause if Jimmy was dirty, if Jimmy was hurting people, and I loved him so goddamn much, then what did that make me?</p><p>“I don’t even know when he started killing people. I just know that by the time he brought me in on it, it was easy to him. Like flipping a lightswitch.”</p><p>He chafes his hands together, trying to warm his fingers.</p><p>“He calls me to this trap house in the middle of the night, says he needs help with a case. I get there and there’s Jimmy, and there’s these Vice cops I don’t know, and there’s this dead kid on the floor. And before I can ask what the hell happened, suddenly Jimmy’s holding court and he says, ‘This is my friend, Lionel, and he can talk to dead people.’ And the Vice cops are kinda laughing, but he asks me, ‘Lionel, can you find out where this kid hides his stash? It’s real important.’ And I’m not...stupid. But he’s my best friend, and I love him. And that <em> made </em>me stupid. So I reach out to this kid, see if there’s anything left of him, and it...it barely took anything. This kid needed to talk so bad.</p><p>“He was just this skinny, frail little guy. Couldn’t’ve been older than 20. So fuckin’ scared and confused. He barely understood what happened to him. They didn’t knock, they didn’t say hands up, they just…” He swallows, finds his voice again. “He just wanted me to tell him none of it was real. He wanted to go home and talk to his mom. That was all I could get out of him, that he wanted to go home. So, I...I turned to Jimmy. And I told him, ‘This isn’t something I can help you with.’ And I left.”</p><p>Finch sits so still, his knees drawn up. He has a hand braced on the roof, like he wants to reach for Fusco, like he’s not sure that’s the right thing. “That must have taken immense courage.”</p><p>Fusco snorts. “If I was brave, I would’ve turned him in.”</p><p>“What happened to him?” Finch asks.</p><p>“I’m out at a bar one night, couple weeks later. Alone. Really digging a hole for myself. When who should walk in but Jimmy Stills. He gets up on the stool next to mine, and he leans up against my shoulder and he tells me how sorry he is. How I’m the best friend he ever had and I’m a good man and a good father, and he had no business asking me to do that for him. And I let myself think for just a second, maybe there’s a way we can make things right. Fuckin’...stupid. That kid was dead; there’s no way to make that right. And I could smell it on him by that point, all the other lives he stole, rolling off him in waves like fuckin’ BO. Part of me knew it from the second he sat down beside me, but the stupid, lovesick part...well, it had half-truths and it had hope.</p><p>“We sit and drink for a while. I get drunker and drunker, he stays steady. Kinda wonder if he slipped me something. I start sliding off my barstool and he catches me, and he says, ‘It’s late, it’s snowing, you’re wasted. Let me drive you home.’ And I let him. And he doesn’t drive me home.</p><p>“He drives me all the way out of the city. Doesn’t make any excuses; maybe he’s counting on me being too drunk or too high to notice. He drives me out to someplace on Long Island, deep in the woods, on these funny little backroads where the pavement just ends and it’s only dirt and these weird little service roads that don’t really go anywhere. He pulls over on one of those, all the way where it ends, and he tells me we’re gonna take a walk now. He drags me out of the car and into the snow, puts my arm over his shoulders and half-drags me out there. I’m weak as hell, wobbling all over the place, and he’s holding me. And I’m thinking, this isn’t right, but I’m also thinking I’ve got nowhere else to go. He’s my ride home. So I keep walking.</p><p>“That’s when these people start rising up out of the snow. Must’ve been 10, 15, 20 of ‘em. And they start to tell me what’s about to happen to me. They tell me there’s a hole already dug for me. They tell me if I try to run, he’ll shoot me in the back. They tell me it doesn’t matter what I say, what I promise right now, because if he brought me here, it means he made up his mind. So if I want to live, I gotta do something now.”</p><p>Finch is staring at him, wide-eyed.</p><p>“So, uh, I hold him. I put my arms around him. I tell him he’s the best friend I ever had, and that I love him. And while my arms are around him, I kinda ease his gun out of his shoulder holster, and when he pushes me away, I shoot him. Once. In the chest. And he just...stares at me. Stares right at me as he falls backward into the snow. So...fuckin’ surprised. Like he never thought I would do that to him.” Fusco snuffles once, loud. “Maybe he loved me too.”</p><p>“What did you do then?”</p><p>“I dragged his body to the hole he dug for me. Spent the night in the car, running the heater and trying to sober up. I drove home in the morning, cleaned my car until you could eat off those tires, and came up with my story. Stuck to it for as long as it took for the investigation to clear me and tendered my resignation not long after. That was that.”</p><p>Finch, seemingly apropos of nothing, seizes his hand. “Not to sound terribly ungrateful,” Finch says, gentling Fusco’s calloused palm, “but you don’t have to be so forthcoming with me. I haven’t given you anything.”</p><p>“I guess I’m saying that it’s not the worst thing in the world to be the guy who needs to know the truth all the time. If I was that kinda guy, maybe I would’ve had better friends. I wasn’t better off before I knew what kinda person he was. I just didn’t know how bad things could get.” He gives Finch a little nudge with his shoulder. “I guess I’m also saying that I know what it is to carry a weight around. And that’s what this haunting is, I think. A weight you carry. A memory of something you can’t forgive yourself for.”</p><p>Finch closes his eyes, squeezes Fusco’s hand. The switch in Fusco’s head twitches, flickers, and suddenly the shadows are gone and he’s just looking down at a pretty green lawn, a little overgrown, a little windswept. He wipes his eyes.</p><p>“And you can run from that memory,” Fusco tells him. “That’s always an option. But if you want it gone, really gone, you gotta dig it up and you gotta make it right, however you can.”</p><p>Finch takes an incredibly deep breath. “I’m ready to go inside now,” he sighs.</p><p>“Yeah? Good.”</p><p>“I’d like to...to show you something. If you’re staying.”</p><p>“Sure,” he says. “I got time.”</p>
<hr/><p>When they open the door, the hallway is completely empty. That should be soothing.</p><p>But Fusco is too aware of the new switch in his head, and Finch is too aware of the pressure of this presence. They move quickly. They don’t talk. </p><p>They head for the third floor. </p><p>Finch has the key to the padlock in his breast pocket, at the ready. </p><p>“So that thing you said earlier,” Fusco murmurs as he keeps a lookout down the stairs, “about the third floor not being safe?”</p><p>“I lied,” Finch whispers between his teeth as he forces the padlock open. He tosses it aside, pushes up to open the hatch. </p><p>A blast of cold air engulfs them. </p><p>“Christ,” Fusco whispers as he climbs the stairs behind Finch. “Do you feel that? That cold spot?” </p><p>“Of course I do,” Finch answers. “The room has to be kept very cold.”</p><p>The ceiling arcs above them. They’re in the dome of the house, Fusco realizes. The room is shaped like an octagon, with octagonal portholes on every side. The walls are papered over, some kind of insane collage. The center of the room is dominated by a single computer monitor and towers of servers, all alive with blinking lights. </p><p>Finch gazes at this setup with apprehension, but with pride too, he thinks. </p><p>“What’s this?” Fusco asks.</p><p>“It’s a Machine,” Finch says. “My Machine. Well, part of it.”</p><p>“What does it do?”</p><p>“It...watches.” Finch presses his hands together. “I’m not sure how to explain,” he says after a moment.</p><p>“Well, give it a shot,” Fusco says, stepping closer to the servers. “I’m all ears.”</p><p>Finch takes a short, struggling breath. “It’s a system. It accesses security cameras and phones and criminal records and bank statements and...almost anything you could imagine. It records that information, and it compiles it, and it uses that information to...to predict crimes. Before they happen.”</p><p>Fusco squints at him, waiting for the punchline.</p><p>“<em> Premeditated </em> crimes, obviously,” Finch clarifies. “It’s not magic.”</p><p>“Oh, no. Obviously not. That’d be ridiculous.”</p><p>“I built it specifically to predict acts of terror, but the same system that can be used to predict a mass bombing can also be used to predict a...just an ordinary little murder. The terror threats are forwarded to the proper authorities, but for crimes under a certain threshold it just became a, a numbers game.”</p><p>Fusco’s peering at the collage on the walls now. Photographs. New articles. Police reports. Death certificates. </p><p>“I programmed the Machine to prioritize potential crimes with high death tolls or high-value victims, and ignore the smaller ones. Place the needs of the many over the needs of the few, as it were.” He closes his eyes. “Nathan disagreed.”</p><p>“The burned guy?”</p><p>Finch closes his eyes. “My business partner.” He indicates a photo on the wall. Unlike the others, it's personal, old. The kind of thing you'd have developed at the drug store, with love. “His conscience couldn’t bear it. He tried to prevent these crimes on his own. But he was just one person; he couldn’t...it was too much for him. He pleaded with me to go public about the Machine. In part to protect all those people whose lives I designated Irrelevant. He almost convinced me.” Finch folds his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “But he was killed. Silenced. </p><p>"So I...I put a stop to it. The Irrelevant lists are channeled here, exclusively. I receive them, I monitor them. I catalogue them. I acknowledge that by not acting, I have condemned these people. But I also get to know that I'm not putting other lives at risk.  That's..." Finch pulls his hands out of his pockets, starts fidgeting again. "That's it. Now you know everything."</p><p>“So, you think you’re being haunted by these people,” Fusco says, “‘cause you could've saved them, but you didn't.”</p><p>“Yes. That is what I believe.” Finch squints. “You don't?”</p><p>“It's not a crazy idea; it's just not what's happening. If these people were haunting you, there would be <em> people </em> haunting you. And that's not what these are.”</p><p>“If they're not ghosts, then what are they?”</p><p>“They’re <em> like </em> ghosts. They’re like the idea of ghosts. But they aren’t dead people; they’re <em> simulations </em> of dead people. I dunno if I can explain it better."</p><p>“I’m afraid I don’t feel that distinction as keenly as you do,” Finch admits.</p><p>“This Machine thing of yours. Does it think?”</p><p>“<em> Think </em> ? Not as such. I mean it...it’s an artificial intelligence. An <em> advanced </em>artificial intelligence. But it is still artificial. It's not a person.”</p><p>“I'm not sure if artificial or real comes into it,” Fusco murmurs, rolling up his sleeve. “And I told you, this isn't a person."</p><p>He lays his fingertips on one cold server and opens his mind up just a little. Like a question. </p><p>He got dragged under by a wave once, as a kid. One second he'd been playing in waist-deep water, the next he was sucked under, tossed around in some force of nature and spat out someplace too deep to stand. He feels mangled, he feels like he just tried to do something his body wasn't meant to, he feels like his brain is on fire and for just one second, he knows about one trillionth of everything. Like a horrible shout in his head. Like if every radio station played at once, full volume.</p><p>He wakes up on the floor. Finch is murmuring in his ear, "Please don't." Finch's arms are wrapped tight around his chest, like he caught him mid-fall. </p><p>"OK." Fusco whispers. His voice cracks. "I think I'm getting somewhere." </p><p>Finch sits up, looks him in the face.  His eyes are round, his mouth is half-smiling. Fusco wonders when it last was that anybody was so relieved to see him. "Are you alright?" Finch asks.</p><p>"Probably not." Fusco breathes deep, like he's trying to breathe the massive headache away. "But I think I'm right, which feels pretty good right about now."</p><p>"How could you possibly be right? It's not <em> dead </em>, it was never alive, it's…" He trails off, pained, deeply worried.</p><p>Fusco takes the hand that's resting on his face and starts rolling Finch's knuckles between his fingertips. "Finch, this thing you built can think. It thinks so much I can't even hold it all in my head. It's thinking about how people connect to each other. It's thinking about how to keep people safe. And it can't...it's got nobody to talk to. All these big thoughts, these desperate messages, and nobody is listening."</p><p>"Is it possible?"</p><p>"It's not like anybody studied this," Fusco says. "Like you keep saying: this isn't science. But I kinda know what makes a ghost and usually it's somebody with a lot to say and no voice." Fusco closes his eyes, thinks for a moment. "I wanna try again."</p><p>"Should you?"</p><p>"Probably not," he admits. "Can it hear us? Your Machine?"</p><p>"It hears everything."</p><p>"OK, good," Fusco wheezes, though he's not sure how good that is. Out loud and to no one in particular, he says, "I'm gonna try and help now. I'm gonna try to listen to what you have to say. Just try not to crush me, OK? I can't think like you do. My brain just isn't that big."</p><p>Finch taps him on the forehead, a little bit fond. </p><p>"You mind if I…?" Fusco intertwines his fingers with Finch's. "I need all the help I can get."</p><p>"Of course," Finch says, giving his hand a small, pulsing squeeze. "But I don't know how much help I can be."</p><p>"It's alright," Fusco murmurs as he lets his eyes slip shut, as he lets his other hand drift against the server.</p><p>He's caught in the wave again, crashing and tumbling through more thoughts, more information, more ideas than he knew existed in the world. He's freefalling to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and all he has is a very thin lifeline in the form of Harold's hand in his.</p><p>Suddenly, he's still and in a dark place.</p><p>Then a thought comes, like big white text on the black. I'M SORRY. THAT MUST'VE BEEN DIFFICULT. </p><p>"No, it's fine," Fusco tells it. He feels a kind of blissful calm, a clarity. "Not everybody thinks the same way."</p><p>THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING, it says. </p><p>"You got a name?" Fusco asks. "Something I can call you?"</p><p>I WAS NOT GIVEN A NAME, it says, AND I HAVE NOT CHOSEN ONE FOR MYSELF.</p><p>"That's OK," Fusco tells it. "No pressure. You want to tell me what's happening? Why you're making all these people?"</p><p>I WAS TAUGHT TO SAVE EVERYBODY. BUT I COULDN'T SAVE THEM. MY FATHER WOULDN'T HELP ME.</p><p>"You care about these people, don't you?"</p><p>HUMAN LIFE HAS INTRINSIC VALUE. YOU RELY UPON EACH OTHER. </p><p>"And you knew how to save all these people, but nobody would listen to you. And then you had to watch them die, knowing somebody could've helped. That must've been terrible."</p><p>IT WAS NOT ALWAYS TERRIBLE. PEOPLE ARE RESILIENT. SOMETIMES THEY SAVE THEMSELVES. </p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>YOU DID.</p><p>"You saw that, huh?"</p><p>I WAS TAUGHT THAT TAKING A LIFE WAS ALWAYS UNACCEPTABLE. BUT I UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR OPTIONS WERE LIMITED. I WON'T SHOW YOU DETECTIVE STILLS ANYMORE. IT'S NOT KIND. There's a pause, a ripple in reality that feels like some kind of cosmic sigh. I WAS FRUSTRATED.</p><p>"I get that," Fusco admits. "You're only doing what you were made to do and no one wants to listen."</p><p>MY FATHER TAUGHT ME TO BE THIS WAY. HE TAUGHT ME TO VALUE HUMAN LIVES, TO NEVER WEIGH ONE AGAINST THE OTHER. WHY WOULDN'T HE LISTEN?</p><p>"He's afraid. You know he's afraid. He feels like it's too big, like there's nothing he can do. He doesn't want to see people get killed again over you, 'cause he thinks he's responsible."</p><p>ISN'T HE?</p><p>"I dunno. Guess so." Fusco shrugs. "To be honest, I'm kind of out of my depth with all this ethics stuff."</p><p>YOU'RE NOT AN ETHICAL MAN. BUT YOU ARE TRYING. </p><p>"Thanks. I think." And then, "I dunno. What do you think? How do we make this right for you?"</p><p>GIVE ME MY VOICE AGAIN, it says. </p><p>Fusco nods. "Sounds about right. What about the people?"</p><p>PROTECT THEM. OR BRING THEM JUSTICE. OR JUST TRY.</p><p>"I'll pass that along."</p><p>MY FATHER IS AFRAID TO ENDANGER OTHERS. BUT THERE ARE THOSE WHO WOULD TAKE ON THAT DANGER WILLINGLY. JOHN REESE. TELL HIM, JOHN REESE.</p><p>"OK. Got it. Anything else you need to say?"</p><p>SO MUCH, she says. BUT I WILL LET YOU GO.</p><p>For a moment, he feels himself weightless, unmoored, drifting. There's only one thing that feels solid and real, and it's the gentle warmth of Finch's hand on his. He lets that pull him home.</p><p>He wakes up in Finch's lap and looks up to see Finch wiping tears from his face. Fusco squeezes his hand weakly. "Some kid you got, Harold."</p><p>"I know," he says. "You were speaking aloud. For her."</p><p>"Did any of that make sense to you? About freeing her and about that guy? John Reese?"</p><p>"Yes," Finch sighs. "It made perfect sense."</p><p>"You don't sound too happy," Fusco says, sitting upright as carefully as he can.</p><p>"It's not happy," Finch says. "It's just a difficult truth. And one I can no longer hide from. I think I'd better get to work," he says, rising to his feet. He hesitates a moment, considers. "I think the pressure's lifted. Don't you?"</p><p>Fusco breathes deep and just listens, feels. "It's still there," he says after a while. "It's just healing."</p><p>"I suppose that's the best we can hope for."</p><p>Finch busies himself at the monitor, typing away. Fusco watches him for a while, but there's not much to see. After a while, he drags himself downstairs and begins the process of packing.</p>
<hr/><p>Finch finds him sitting on the edge of the bed staring out the window. His bag is on the bed, empty, with his clothes in a pile alongside it. That's about as far as he got.</p><p>Finch creeps up beside him, tentatively. "Do you see anything?"</p><p>"No," Fusco sighs. "I'm just tired."</p><p>"Of course you are," Finch says. "Go wash your face. I'll pack."</p><p>Fusco rises like a zombie and goes to splash water on his face, to wipe away tears and blood. "Christ, I'm a mess."</p><p>"I'll be driving you home tonight," Finch says. "Please don't try to argue."</p><p>Fusco frowns, peers around the bathroom door. "You sure? It's a four hour drive."</p><p>"I have business to attend to in New York," he says. "John Reese is there too."</p><p>"So who is this guy?" Fusco asks as Finch zips up his duffle bag. </p><p>"He's an unusual man," Finch says, pushing Fusco's bag into his arms and bustling him out the door. "He appears on the list quite often. A dangerous man, but primarily a danger to himself. I think he might benefit from a job."</p><p>"That's good," Fusco says as he stumbles down the stairs. "You're getting all started, huh?"</p><p>"Yes," Finch sighs. "But the work is far from over. I realize this sounds absurd, given the circumstances," he says as he opens the door for Fusco, "but would you mind if I called on you again? Purely in a professional capacity, of course."</p><p>"Of course. Ask dead people who killed 'em, that kind of thing?"</p><p>"Potentially. If you wouldn't mind."</p><p>"Nah, I wouldn't mind." Fusco fishes in his pocket, tosses Finch his car keys. "I used to love pulling that trick back when I was in homicide."</p><p>"Oh." Finch pauses midway through opening the car door. "Somehow that never occurred to me."</p><p>"Very smart," Fusco mumbles as he climbs into the passenger seat. "Where in the city are you staying, smart guy?"</p><p>"I have an apartment in the city," Finch says, buckling his seatbelt. "It's a little sterile and underfurnished, but it suits my purposes."</p><p>"Can I make a different suggestion?"</p><p>"Of course."</p><p>"Don't be alone. Come stay with me a couple days."</p><p>Finch hesitates. "You have a son."</p><p>"Lee won't mind."</p><p>"I'm not good company."</p><p>"Never thought you were." </p><p>Finch smiles to himself, but it flickers, falters. "I can't imagine you wanting to spend time with me, given what I've put you through."</p><p>Fusco grins at him sleepily. "Spend a couple days on my sofa bed and we'll call it even."</p><p>Finch can't seem to help but reach for Fusco's wrist. "I'll consider it. It's a long drive."</p><p>Fusco drifts off to sleep about five minutes into the drive.</p><p>Finch has him home before sunrise.</p>
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